QuickPar + IMGBurn + IsoBuster = Never Worry about Scratched DVDs Again

Many of us have already converted to portable hard drives of large USB keys for storage backups, but a lot of people still chooose to burn data backups on DVDs, which offer a better cost/capacity ratio. The risk here is of course scratching one of those DVDs and losing all your data. Luckily, there's a way to create resilient DVDs that even when scratched, can still be recovered.

QuickPar

QuckPar is a free app that creates parity volumes for any number of files. Parity files can be used by data recovery apps to verity and reconstruct corrected files or groups of files. Think of them as redundant puzzle pieces that can fill in holes in an incomplete picture. With QuickPar, you can create parity files of any block size and redundancy, which is useful for filling up the empty space of a DVD backup. 

Let's say you want to burn a collection of movie files that total up to 3GB. You can just burn those files on a DVD, but you would leave about 1.5GB of space that is pretty much wasted. Open up QuickPar, and drop in all of those movie files in the "Source Files" section of the window. QuickPar will display the combined size of these files, which gives you an idea of how much space would still be available on your DVD. Next, move the sliders for Block Allocation and Redundancy  to the right, maxing out at when the indicated Recovery Data Size matches the leftover capacity of your DVD without going over. Click the Create button once you're done. 

IMGBurn

Using our favorite ISO and file-burning application, IMGBurn, we can create a disc image using our original movie files and the newly created parity recovery files. The process couldn't be simpler!

IsoBuster

Once you've burned these files to a disc, the DVD should be recoverable from light scratches that result in data loss. As long as there are enough parity files that remain intact, you can recover all of your files with a program called IsoBuster. IsoBuster isn't free, but it's trial option has the capability to piece damaged files together with the right parity files. Keep in mind that the more parity files you create (up to 100% redundancy), the better protected your data will be. That's why it's smarter to not cram as much data on a DVD as possible, so you can leave space for these sweet headache-preventing files.

Page2RSS + XFruits = Updates for Any Site, Any Way

XFruits and Page2RSS are two services that—together—allow you to keep up to date on all your favorite websites, in whatever way is convenient for you. To understand how, let’s take a look at the two programs involved:

XFruits

XFruits is a free web service that allows you to reorganize content from RSS feeds. Normally, an RSS feed is simply a means to syndicate content—a sequential list of titles, links, images and text, easily viewed with Desktop readers and web apps. XFruits lets you go much further with your feeds.

With XFruits you can, for instance, automatically convert an RSS feed into emails, into posts on your blog, or into a webpage specifically formatted for mobile phones. You can also aggregate multiple feeds into single feed, create an RSS feed from an email account, or save data from feeds into a ready-to-print PDF files.

With XFruits, as long as a page provides an RSS feed, you can view its content in whichever way is most convenient for you.

Page2RSS

Now, if only there was some way to get around that pesky “as long as a page provides an RSS feed” qualifier… Oh, that’s right—there is!

Page2RSS is a website which watches any website you want it to, and records any changes made to that page. It then saves these changes as an RSS feed which you can view with a feed reader, or reorganize with XFruits. You’re also given the URL of a page you can check at any time to see a log of recent changes to the site. Page2RSS “crawls” all the sites a couple of times every day, meaning that changes aren’t reported in real-time, but you can still get a pretty good idea of what’s gone on recently on a website.

Confused as to exactly what sorts of changes Page2RSS reports? As an example, take a look at the Page2RSS change log for www.google.com. You’ll see that the page shows all the recent times when the main Google graphic changed, or when little bits of text were added. Note that Page2RSS preserves links too, and that clicking on the Mother’s Day Google graphic will take you to a Google search for “Mother’s Day.” To see an example of how Page2RSS handles a more content-rich page, check out its log for www.cnn.com. It’s not quite as complete as you would get with the actual CNN RSS feed, but it does manage to find all the headlines, pictures, thumbnails and links.